Bride Required. Alison Fraser

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СКАЧАТЬ mean turn up at the squat?’ She was horrified by the idea. ‘No, thanks. I’ll meet you at the station or the deal’s off.’

      Baxter realised she didn’t want him to know where she lived. He supposed that was fair enough from her angle.

      He went into his pocket again and found his passport, still there from when he’d flown in a few days ago. He handed it to her.

      Dee checked it over, as he’d intended. It came open at the back pages; they were stamped with the names of a dozen countries, mostly in Africa. She flipped to the front and glanced at his picture. It was an old passport, showing a picture of him from some years ago. It looked like him, only without the current signs of age and experience. She checked the other details. Name: Baxter Macfarlane Ross. Occupation: Doctor. Birthplace: Bangkok.

      ‘Bangkok.’ She read it aloud. ‘As in Bangkok, Thailand?’

      ‘My parents were missionaries,’ he explained. ‘They happened to be trying to convert South-East Asia round the time of my birth.’

      ‘So where exactly were you brought up?’

      ‘Lots of places, but Scotland mainly. That’s where our grandparents lived and that’s where we were sent to school.’

      ‘Boarding school?’ she guessed, and he nodded in response.

      It explained a lot. He had no real accent, despite the fact she’d made a joke of it earlier. Instead he sounded neutral, almost as if he was a foreigner who’d learned to speak perfect English.

      ‘So, do your parents live up in Edinburgh?’ she asked, and felt a measure of relief when he shook his head. She didn’t fancy playing the blushing bride to some holy rollers who probably still believed in marriage.

      ‘They died when I was twelve,’ he added briefly.

      ‘Sorry,’ Dee apologised for her mean thoughts.

      ‘It was a long time ago.’ He dismissed any need for sensitivity. ‘And I didn’t know them well… My sister lives near me.’

      ‘Oh.’ So she was to meet some of his family. ‘Are you and your sister close?’

      ‘Yes and no. I’ve spent a large part of my adult life abroad… What about you? Do you have any brothers or sisters?’

      ‘No, I’m a little emperor.’ She’d read the expression in a magazine.

      ‘A what?’

      ‘An only child. It’s what they call them in China, now they operate a one-child policy… Apparently couples in Britain are also opting to have a single child so they can give them everything.’

      ‘Is that what you were given…everything?’ He wondered once more about this girl of contradictions.

      ‘Of course,’ she answered in ironic tones. ‘As you see, I dine at the Ritz, buy my clothes from Harvey Nichols and live in a darling little mews house in South Kensington.’

      He gave her an impatient look. ‘I take it that means no.’

      Dee shrugged. He could take it how he wanted. In truth she had been spoilt—materially anyway—until the day she had run away in her state-of-the-art trainers, designer jeans, and the baseball jacket that had come with a three-hundred-pound price tag and had fallen apart within weeks of her hitting the London streets.

      She handed back his passport, and he said, ‘Now you know who I am, perhaps you could trust me with your address.’

      ‘Just because you’re Dr Ross?’ She pulled a face, still unimpressed.

      ‘Point taken.’ He took one of the cheap paper napkins Rick had tossed down in front of them and wrote something on it.

      ‘The Continental,’ Dee read. ‘Sounds posh.’

      He ignored her, writing down the nearest tube station and precise directions on how to find the hotel. ‘Meet me in the foyer tomorrow at nine o’clock, and we’ll go shopping for suitable clothing. Okay?’

      Dee nodded and put the napkin in her jacket. She didn’t meet his eyes. If she had, he might have realised she was already having second thoughts. Girls who met up with strangers, however respectable-looking, were asking for trouble.

      Baxter watched her as she got up, issued brief thanks for the meal, and, gathering her possessions and dog, made for the door. He was no fool. Chances were he would never see her again.

      Dee walked quickly, checking behind her a few times, but there was no sign of him. He trusted her. He actually believed she was going to meet him.

      ‘Mug,’ she muttered aloud, but it didn’t stop her feeling guilty. She hadn’t meant to lead him on. It was his fault really. It had sounded so attractive—sleeping in a clean bed, eating good food, earning money for virtually nothing.

      But nothing was for nothing in this life. She knew better. She thought of her stepfather—respected consultant, charming host, generous father. For a while, at least, until he’d looked for the pay-back.

      Dee put a brake on her thoughts. She wasn’t going to get bitter. She wouldn’t let him ruin her life. She wasn’t like the other girls, running away from a lifetime of abuse. Much of her childhood had been happy, and she still had hopes of a future better than her dismal present.

      She checked behind her once more before she veered towards the wasteland which surrounded the maisonettes. All boarded up, they looked deserted, but she knew that several had been turned into squats. Hers was at the end of the block and two flights up.

      She looked along the balcony and down below, checking she was alone, before dislodging the loose boarding at the bottom of a window. Then she squeezed through and dragged Henry after her. She replaced the boarding and used a brick to hold it in position from the inside. She kept a torch in her rucksack, and used it long enough to locate the candles and matches hidden under the rotting sink-cupboard.

      She slept in a back room, where the last occupant had abandoned an old mattress. It was stained and musty, but better than the floor. Dee had her own sleeping bag, which she washed with her clothes at the launderette when she had any spare money. She still never felt clean.

      She’d lived like this, in one squat or another, for three months, and she’d begun to get used to it. She supposed it was meeting Baxter Ross that had made her re-evaluate. She went to the toilet and looked in the cracked mirror above the sink. A gaunt face with hollow eyes looked back at her. Once she’d been considered pretty, and was vain enough to wonder if anyone would see her as such again. Or had her looks gone, along with her middle-class attitudes? Blown away by insecurity and desperation?

      She thought of what Baxter Ross was offering. Right at the moment it was the only chance of a future she had. Perhaps she was crazy to turn it down. It would mean living a lie, but so what? She had watched her mother doing that for years.

      Had her mother pretended with her father, too? Dee wasn’t sure. She had seemed devastated when he died, but within months had been going out with Edward Litton, a consultant at the hospital.

      At first Dee had resented it, out of loyalty to her father. СКАЧАТЬ